About Lloyd Lofthouse

Lloyd Lofthouse earned a BA in journalism after fighting in Vietnam as a U. S. Marine.
He then taught English and journalism in the public schools by day (for thirty years) and for a time worked as a maitre d' in a multimillion-dollar nightclub by night. Later, he earned a MFA in writing.
He lives near San Francisco.

Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy and former deputy commissioner of education in Ohio, laments the commercializations that charter schools have introduced into K-12 schooling, while claiming to be “public schools”:

He writes:

“For sale: A school–The practice of buying and selling charter schools signals the complete disconnect between school and community

“The greatest human-inspired public institution-the common school-was created as a school for all children. The nexus between the community and the common school is powerful in the lives of school children; charter schools are not community-based entities.

“Parents in a school district would be shocked if they opened the morning paper and read the headline: School district for sale. That happens in the charter world.

“Charter school organizations are bought and sold. Ron Packard, former CEO of K12-Inc. (in Ohio, K-12 Inc. operates the Ohio Virtual Academy) left K-12, Inc. and started a…

The NAACP bravely spoke out in favor of regulating charter schools to make them accountable, transparent, and subject to the same standards as public schools.

Most people would say that the NAACP’s concerns and recommendations are reasonable.

But supporters of charter schools are outraged and hysterical.

The Center for Education Reform, which has advocated for charters for more than 20 years, astonishingly called the NAACP “opportunity’s opponent.” This is a breathtakingly insulting slur coming from a conservative organization that has long been hostile to public education.

CER provides a link to other rightwing organizations that oppose the NAACP’s criticism of public schools.

Ever since it was released, charter supporters have complained bitterly about the report and accused the NAACP of being paid off by the unions.

This is ridiculous. It is a sound and sober report.

Consider its recommendations.

1. There should be more equitable and adequate funding for schools serving children of color. The school finance system is extremely unfair and inequitable over states, districts, and schools. School funding in 36 states has not returned to its pre-2008 levels, when budgets were slashed. Federal funds in real dollar amounts have declined for Title I and special education over the same period.

Do charter supporters disagree?

2. School finance reform is needed to ensure that dollars go where the needs are greatest.

Do charter supporters disagree?

3. Invest in low-performing schools and in schools that have a significant opportunity to close achievement gaps. “Students…

“When these people talk about ‘government schools,’ they want you to think of an alien force, and not an expression of democratic purpose. And when they say ‘freedom,’ they mean freedom from democracy itself.”

When the DeVos crowd and rightwing think tanks refer to “government schools,” they are drawing their rhetoric from a dark and ugly history, tainted by racism, anti-Catholicism, and hatred of democracy itself.

Trump, DeVos, the religious right, and conservatives today promote “school choice” so children do not have to attend “government schools.” But where did this language come from?

She writes:

Before the Civil War, the South was largely free of public schools. That changed during Reconstruction, and when it did, a former Confederate Army chaplain and a leader of the Southern Presbyterian Church, Robert Lewis Dabney, was not happy about it. An avid defender of the biblical “righteousness” of slavery, Dabney railed against the…

I just returned from the 2017 NAACP national convention in Baltimore. Two important events occurred. The first I’m not going to talk about here on Cloaking Inequity until after the NAACP National Board meeting in the fall— I learned my lesson last year :). Second, the NAACP’s Task Force on High Quality Education released a report after their year long listening tour that took place across the United States.

NAACP | NAACP's SPECIAL TASK FORCE ON QUALITY EDUCATION TO PRESENT FINDINGS FROM PUBLIC HEARINGS ON EDUCATION… https://t.co/xhYlCvlXxi

This very important post was written for this blog by Jim Scheurich on behalf of himself, Gayle Cosby, and Nathanial Williams, who are identified in the text. They are experienced in the school politics of Indianapolis, a city whose school system is being systematically dismantled and privatized. They have been active in the fight against what they call the DPE (Destroy Public Education) model in their city. Their experience and insights are extremely informative, especially their recognition that the DPE movement is not limited to Indianapolis; it has gone national. Indianapolis is only one of its targets. The business community, civic leaders, political leaders, DFER, the Mind Trust, and Stand for Children have joined together to Destroy Public Education. As they attack democratic institutions, they falsely claim that “it is all about the kids” and they claim they are advancing civil rights. Instead, it is about money and power and…

Randi Weingarten gave a major address to the AFT Teach Conference yesterday, in which she explained why she took Betsy DeVos to Van Wert, Ohio, and she called out the forces of destruction now targeting public schools in America. It is time, she says, to resist. To resist privatization by charters and vouchers; to resist the attacks on the teaching profession; to fight racial segregation; to resist the budget cuts that hurt children. And to stand up proudly for our public schools, the anchor of our communities, governed democratically by elected school boards. [Jeanne Allen, director of the pro-charter, pro-voucher Center for Education Reform, called for Randi’s resignation for drawing a line connecting school choice advocates today with segregationists in the mid-twentieth century.]

I. Introduction—My Day with Betsy

Welcome to TEACH!

I know many of you have just arrived in Washington (and you can understand why we call it the…